


The More Lavishly He Spends

by tibeyg



Category: Arthurian Mythology, Merlin (TV)
Genre: Avalon - Freeform, LITERALLY, Le Lai de Lanval, M/M, Marie de France, Mediaeval Romance, Otherworld, corny mediaeval love at first sight, dicking around with fairies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-03
Updated: 2017-06-03
Packaged: 2018-11-08 10:41:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11079903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tibeyg/pseuds/tibeyg
Summary: Arthur's out of cash, but that's ok because there's this mysterious white tent in the middle of the woods and he's going inside it.





	The More Lavishly He Spends

**Author's Note:**

> I've been studying mediaeval Arthurian literature and came across Marie de France's "Le Lai de Lanval", and it's a pretty interesting read. Title is from the Hanning and Ferrante translation. This fic is heavily inspired by the first half of the lai, and the style is influenced by both actual mediaeval literature and Victorian Mediaevalism. The character of Arthur, however, is derived more from the Malory tradition.

Arthur left Camelot on the spring festival day. The court and townsfolk were gathered in the square, and it was easy to load his few belongings onto his horse and lead her out, through the back alleys to the gate. Although sedate and headstrong in battle, the sounds of music and dancing feet unnerved her, and it was easy to coax her away from them. He looked back before leaping into the saddle, then set his eyes forward.

It had been folly for a foster son of a minor lord to try his fortunes here. Without even a simple pewter goblet to claim as his inheritance, he may as well have been a bastard. Camelot had offered hope at first, and Arthur had been certain that his skill with the sword would see him richly rewarded. He had applied himself to his knighthood, and fostered bonds with the common people he served. Yet for a second year, the king had taken no notice. The rest of the court, realising this, had slowly turned their backs to him. There was no hope now of him finding favour; with the meagre remnants of his funds, he could hardly sustain himself for another week.

He followed the path into the thick woodland that ringed Camelot’s creamy walls. The beauty of it soothed his mind; the endless green, its myriad textures, the whispering colloquy of the wavering branches. His horse moved easily, dawdling to sniff at flowers and nibble at greenery. Her hooves were soft against the packed dirt floor, and their breaths were deadened in the thick arboreal press. They came presently to a stream, so shallow that the water slipped like cascading lace over the pebbly bottom. Here, his horse whickered with unease. 

‘Go on, girl,’ he said. She had forded more treacherous streams; it was silly of her to hesitate now.

She was an assertive creature. There was no moving her. _Perhaps she is tired_ , thought Arthur, and removed the saddle to let her roll in the grass on the bank. He lay on the red cloak of Camelot near her, and watched the peaceful environs. Surely, he would not pass through these woods again; it was a shame, for they lightened the heaviness of his heart.

His horse, having rolled her fill, was becoming rapidly interested in a clump of bushes. 

‘What is it, girl?’ asked Arthur, coming to her side. He gathered up the saddle, buckled it back onto her, and grasping her reins, sword unsheathed, followed her past the bushes.

It was there he beheld a most wondrous thing.

Against the green and gloom of the forest, a white tent, gleaming and pristine, had been erected. The elegant drape of its cloths murmured of innumerable riches. Each single rope, twined with blue threads, that held up the incongruous structure was surely worth more than Arthur’s armour. It was topped, ostentatiously, with a single golden falcon, wings outstretched as if to swoop into flight at any moment.

The sight of it mingled curiosity and trepidation in Arthur’s heart, but his horse was growing intrigued, nudging him forward with her soft nose. He went slowly, steeling himself against his apprehension. He approached the flap, trimmed with blue, and lifted it aside with the point of his sword. 

The inside was furnished with a resplendence that even the most lavish lords and ladies at Camelot would have envied. The point of the sword lowered in stunned distraction. Rich blue cloths spilled over every surface; velvet, silk, alexandrine. Gold shone against these – as threads, instruments, and ornaments. Thick furs carpeted the ground. There was an ermine on the bed and, atop it, a young man of unsurpassable beauty. 

He lay reclined, like a figure in a mosaic that Arthur had come across once in a quest, in a strange abandoned house of the long-departed Romans. Draped in a white cloth, fine as spider silk, his face, neck, and one muscled breast was exposed. He may as well have been naked. The black of his hair against the white of his skin; on his head, curling around his ears; on his cheeks and chest, dusted in dregs. Arthur had dropped the reins already. His booted feet, caked in the inevitable dirt of travel, were stepping of their own accord through the thicket of furs. His sword – simple steel – was falling away to land cushioned against the carpets.

‘Arthur, my love,’ said the man on the bed. He was smiling, and beautiful. ‘I have come to seek you from my land. I have watched over you for so long, and seen that you are courageous and virtuous. No other can know the joy and goodness of you that I do. I love you more than anything.’

It seemed impossible, but the openness of his face could not be anything but the truth. His eyes crinkled at the corners with kindness and pleasant humour. The little wrinkles in the smooth expanse of skin seemed incongruously human on this inhumanly beautiful creature. It was upon noticing this that Arthur felt his heart catch with the fire of love.

‘Lovely one,’ he replied. It seemed impossible that his voice could even work. His mouth felt dry. He had knelt, because he could no longer stand before this wonder. ‘It is my joy to be loved by you. I am yours, captor of my heart. I will never leave you. You are my greatest desire.’

And – impossibly, impossibly! – the little wrinkles deepened with joy, and Arthur’s arrested heart pulsed at the sight. The white hands reached for him from under the delicate little cloth, which fell away from a finely-turned shoulder. Arthur went to him. He was irresistible.

The red cloak fell away, and pooled red against the blues of the interior. The leg plates unbuckled and cast away. The mail shirt lifted up and put aside with the rustle of chains.

The man unbound Arthur from his raiment with patient care, and Arthur was helpless against the onslaught of undoing love. Only when he was laid bare against the white ermine, wearing only the blood flush of shyness on his skin for modesty, did the man bestow a kiss upon him. Arthur’s eyes fluttered shut against it, and when they parted again, he saw that the white cloth which had covered the man was gone.

It was a beautiful, lithe body of contrasting blacks and whites, but Arthur had little time to admire it. He was being kissed again, this time with the mouth open against his, nudging a gentle tongue inside. He felt impossibly lost, almost maidenly. No woman, let alone man, had ever lavished him with such displays. 

The man seemed to sense this, and drew back tenderly. ‘You are unfamiliar with the acts of love,’ he said.

Arthur turned his face away. He had never felt ashamed of this before, and the unfamiliar feeling frustrated him. But the white hand drew his gaze back. 

‘I will be your sole love,’ he breathed. The fingers tightened with possessive desire. It was impossible not to deny him this.

Arthur learnt, slowly, the procedures of the embrace. He learnt the shape of the man’s mouth, the plump bow of it reddening steadily against his own. He learnt to distinguish the textures of the inner cheek, the uneven roof of the palate, and the undulating tongue. He learnt of touch, his hesitant hands sliding along the white flank as responding hands kneaded and caressed wantonly in the guise of demonstration. When he scuffed a palm against the rough black hairs on the chest, the hands would knead his generous mound of his breast and pinch the pink nipple red until he let go of the mouth to cry out. When he let his hand dip shyly downwards, he learnt of the rites of love.

The white hand on him put him on the brink of spilling barely moments after it had been placed there. He gasped when the man postponed his fulfilment.

‘Later,’ he murmured against Arthur’s sobbing mouth. ‘Let us become one before you finish.’

He laid Arthur on his stomach, filling his nose and open mouth with ermine fur, and parted Arthur’s legs and buttocks. Arthur felt the cool air against his hidden places, and the following stroke of a thumb, catching lingeringly at the rim of the pucker there. 

‘Let me open you,’ said the man.

‘Yes,’ said Arthur.

He was prised carefully apart by the long fingers, and made wet. Stretched impossibly wide, soaked impossibly slick. There was a bottle of it, he was dimly aware; he had heard the pop of its cork as it was pulled off, and he felt the rim of it touch his when it tipped, gently, its contents into his innards. The sensation of it sliding inside had his eyes rolling, and he choked with the unimaginable pleasure of the fingers diving back in after to nudge tantalisingly against the shy little knob within, the one which – when pressed – forced his spine to arch and his mouth to moan. Could he know a greater bliss than this?

‘Are you ready for me?’ asked the man, stroking him inside and on the small of his back.

‘I am yours,’ Arthur told him.

But the man was unsatisfied. ‘I will be your first,’ he said. ‘You need –‘ And here, he took the buttocks in both hands and parted them again, pressed his lips to the newly-formed gape there, and murmured softly a sequence in a foreign tongue. A moment of warmth, and the satisfied tug of fingers on the loosened rim. _Magic_ , Arthur realised, but his mind was too preoccupied with the imminent act of love to register this further.

The man took him from behind, and they lay on their sides. He was gentle, as a groom is to a startled horse. Each stroke pushed sound from Arthur’s mouth. The demure little spot inside him was torn from hiding each time he was filled; the man rubbed knowingly and unrelentingly against it. Arthur could not even buck back; he had been made passive, a receptacle of pleasure. 

‘You are so beautiful,’ the man gasped into his ear. ‘Look at you, turned inside-out for me. How could I be so fortunate?’

‘You have made me truly alive,’ Arthur said, turning his head. He wanted to kiss his love, but it the uncontrollable jostling of their bodies made it impossible to catch his mouth.

Arthur climaxed untouched, the sheer pleasure inside prompting his excitable, virginal body to release in shuddering clench after clench. He felt himself clamp relentlessly around the man, and heard the moans he engendered.

But even when the last of the shudders melted away and he began to kiss back the mouth against his, it had not been enough for his lover, still warm and solid inside.

‘Wait, my love,’ he whispered, and suddenly, Arthur was empty. The loss of it was an almost visceral pain, and he cried out against it. But hands were pressing him onto his back, and his knees were being hitched up over strong thighs, and man nudged back inside like notch of an arrow sliding home. Arthur could not even clench on him in welcome; he had been made so loose.

He offered his body for love, and offered sated kisses to answer ones of still unquenched lust. His pleasure had left him tender inside, but he bore it for his love. And presently, they were both rewarded with thighs slapping with abandon as a new warmth spurted inside and oozed around the moving length with an erotic, wet sound.

They lay together beneath a rich blue coverlet afterwards. Arthur was tracing the sharp lines of his lover’s body, its white now flushed from the act of love. 

‘Lovely one,’ he said. ‘I am only a humble knight. The king himself has not noticed me. But surely, you are greater than even he. How can you love me?’

‘Hush. How can you say that?’ His lover pushed up onto one elbow. ‘You, a humble knight?’

Arthur frowned up at him. ‘It is true. I am not even a son, let alone a firstborn. I thought myself skilled with the sword, but I am nothing compared to those at Camelot’s court.’ Then, a terrible thought came to him. ‘Unless…I am the wrong man? Is it another you truly love?’

‘Arthur! How can you say that?’ His lover caressed his face, his hand rough with urgency. ‘It is you I love, regardless. I have seen your devotion to the king, though he neglected you. You served the people with earnestness. You fought for the justice of others, though you had been deprived of it. You have turned your back only now, after two years of such treatment, because you cannot survive on what you have left.

‘I have come for you now, to offer my love and all that I own so that you can be renewed, and continue to serve Camelot with your good heart.’

Arthur blinked tears from his eyes at these words. ‘Surely, wondrous one, I could never repay this generous deed.’

The fierceness in his lover’s eyes softened into tenderness, and he pressed in to rest his forehead against Arthur’s. ‘Beloved,’ he said. ‘Give me your love. It is all I need.’

‘You have it,’ Arthur said roughly, and kissed him with his knight’s strength. 

This bout of lovemaking was a rawer affair than the first, the scent of lust heady in the cloistered air of the tent. Their grappling bodies tossed the coverlet onto the floor as Arthur pinned his breathless lover beneath him.

‘Let me take you in again,’ he said.

His lover’s eyes flared gold in response, and he felt the muscles of his hole, already tightening from before, loosen again. He took his lover in.

The breach was like a homecoming. His lover threw his head back, mouth open in a silent cry as he slid down the length. 

Their rhythm was uneven, a clash between Arthur drawing himself up-down-up-down and his lover’s relentlessly snapping hips. There were no moans now, Arthur grunted with exertion as his lover breathed through gritted teeth. When the cock slipped out, his lover growled and pushed himself up, manoeuvring himself behind Arthur and taking him from behind.

Arthur’s eyes rolled from the sensation of it, as he collapsed onto his elbows in glorious surrender. Gasping for breath, he turned his head to lock gazes with his lover in his dishevelled beauty, straining behind – inside – him. 

The sounds of their love were filthy. Their skin met with the meaty snap of flesh against flesh. The wetness of his arse made little noises. His lover, panting and grunting behind him; he himself, moaning louder than a tavern whore. He found himself pressed into the ermine as a hand moved from his hip to his shoulder, holding him down; this new angle pressed again at the shy spot inside, and he arched against his lover’s body to shout.

When they had finished, panting and filmed with sweat, he was made to hold his position while his lover gazed raptly at his used hole, waiting for the trickle of his seed.

‘There it is,’ he breathed. His expression was hungry, dominating. Arthur could feel the wet little drop slide down his taint. ‘You have no idea how beautiful you look, dripping with me.’ His hand kneaded the flesh of Arthur’s arse, hard. ‘That little hole, fucked red and puffy, welling with white. This, my love,’ he tapped against it, and it was still sensitive, ‘shows that you’re mine.’

‘Don’t doubt it,’ said Arthur – and view be damned – turned around to kiss the man.

Later, the man conjured – quite literally – a plate of delicious, unfamiliar fruits and bread laden with spices, and goblets of heady, colourless wine. He insisted on feeding Arthur, and giggled when Arthur licked his fingers.

‘Tell me, my beautiful one,’ Arthur said against his juice-sweet fingers, ‘who are you exactly?’

He blinked at Arthur, slow and smiling. ‘Only Merlin.’

‘Merlin.’ The name of a bird. Somehow, it seemed too simple for a man so beautiful and encased in such finery.

But Merlin’s eyes were crinkling again. ‘My name on your tongue!’ He drew the tongue in question into his mouth and sucked. ‘It tastes as sweet as it sounds.’

Arthur brushed a heavy hand through his dark curls, drawing them back from his lovely face. ‘Where do you come from?’

‘The court of Avalon,’ he said, almost shyly. 

Avalon. _Of course_ , thought Arthur in wonder. No earthly place could produce such a creature.

‘Will you take me there?’ he asked. But Merlin shook his head, and pressed another slice of bread into his mouth.

‘Not yet, my love. One day, when you have fulfilled your purpose here, I will take you with me.’

‘But how will I see you?’ said Arthur, swallowing down the bread with a mouthful of wine.

‘I will come to you again when the time is right,’ Merlin said. He ran his hands up Arthur’s bare flank to his cheek, which he turned for a kiss. ‘Then, we will never again be wanting.’

*

They awoke intertwined in the pre-dawn glow.

‘You must leave now, my love,’ whispered Merlin to him, and Arthur’s heart went tight.

They made love for a final time, wrapped around each other. Merlin replenished the wetness within Arthur with his corked bottle. His arse had throbbed when he awoke, but when Merlin slotted back inside he forgot all sensations but this: the choking fullness, the completion, the stretch. They kept their mouths on each other and breathed of love. Merlin finished first, curling into Arthur’s chest as he shook and slammed against him, then took Arthur’s cock and stroked it until he splashed against his white stomach.

They were loath to let go. Merlin stayed inside him until he softened and slipped out, and Arthur bemoaned the loss. He sat up on his haunches to drip out as much as he could of Merlin’s seed onto the soiled ermine before dressing, swirling his fingers inside to encourage the flow as Merlin lay bonelessly beside and whimpered at the sight. He got up to dress Arthur piece by piece, lingering hands grazing over skin before cloth covered it. Then he led Arthur outside to his horse, still waiting patiently beside the tent where he had left her, covered only in his thin white cloth. Arthur hoisted himself into the seat of the saddle. His arse ached, but he never wanted the sensation to vanish. The soreness within would be the only souvenir of Merlin’s love.

‘Goodbye, my beloved,’ Merlin whispered, and drew him down to kiss him hard. ‘You will find all you need when you return. Now go, return to Camelot.’

‘It won’t be the same as it is here,’ Arthur said.

‘No,’ Merlin conceded. ‘But your business there is not yet complete. Perhaps I will join you sooner than you think.’

‘I don’t want to wait.’

But Merlin shook his dark head. ‘The tapestries of destiny do not weave in ways we desire.’ He kissed, then sucked lightly on Arthur’s fingers. ‘One last thing. You may speak to none about me, or you shall lose me for good.’

‘You have my word.’ Arthur was too jealous to share him even in speech.

‘Now go,’ Merlin said. ‘Before I hold on to you forever.’

He slapped the mare’s rump and she took off with a trot. But when Arthur looked back to raise his hand in farewell, the tent and his love were already hidden from view.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please leave a comment if you enjoyed.
> 
> If you like the enemies-to-lovers trope then check out [my gf's gay novel](http://valeaida.tumblr.com/post/149576789996/an-elegy-info-post), illustrated by me!


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